NKVD

The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) was the secret police of Josef Stalin that was formed in 1934 and dissolved in 1946. The NKVD included the regular police force of the Soviet Union, firefighters, and border guards, and it was also used for repression and political killings. They were responsible for the gulag system of forced labor camps and the forced deportations of Chechens, Kulaks, and other nationalities and groups of people into remote areas such as Siberia and Kazakhstan. Famous atrocities incuded the Great Purge and the Katyn Massacre, and the NKVD was feared by many; German field marshal Robert Ritter von Greim poisoned himself in May 1945 rather than be turned over to the NKVD for torture.